


mine is a heart of carnelian, crimson as murder on a holy day

by halfmoonsevenstars



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Tumblr Prompt, Wordcount: 500-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 02:00:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3232061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfmoonsevenstars/pseuds/halfmoonsevenstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr user gelasius prompted: "Peggy Carter(/&)Howard Stark, Metropolitan Museum of Art."</p>
            </blockquote>





	mine is a heart of carnelian, crimson as murder on a holy day

It isn’t until later, of course, that Peggy thinks that it had been fitting, meeting Howard at Perneb’s tomb—although of course she’d had no way of knowing how prescient he’d truly been. It’s one of those rainy December Saturdays where just about everyone who hasn’t already found something else to do winds up at the Met, and Peggy is scrutinizing a stele of servants bearing offerings for the afterlife when he sidles up next to her.

She has no need to turn to her left in order to confirm that it’s Howard, because what is Peggy, an amateur? She can see his polished wing-tips and a sliver of expensive pinstripe out of the corner of her practiced eye; furthermore, the scent of his Italian cologne mixed with piney, astringent gin would have tipped her off. Howard is oddly subdued, though, from what Peggy can make out of his posture, and _that_ part is surprising.

"Thanks for meeting me, Peg," he says out of the side of his mouth as he pretends to read a label explaining the carving of Pharaoh with his crook and flail, and for the first time that she can remember, Howard sounds old. Old, and tired.

"Of course. We go back a long way, don’t we?"

He nods, a quick jerk of his chin, so fast it’s a wonder he doesn’t get whiplash from it. “I think someone’s after me,” Howard tells her without preamble. “I don’t know who and I don’t know why, not exactly.”

"Shouldn’t you be taking this to the police?" she wants to know, shifting her purse from one arm to the other. "And what do you mean, ‘not exactly’?"

"I mean, I think I know what might be going on and I’m doing my best to stop it, but I’ve got nothing to show for it."

"And?" Peggy asks, after a few moments of looking very interested in finding out how a mastaba tomb was built.

"And what?"

"You didn’t come all the way uptown just to reenact that Watergate movie, did you? Are you going to tell me?"

She can see Howard shake his head in her peripheral vision. “I don’t think you’d believe me, Peg. Even you can’t do anything about it, not until I have proof. But I _will_. I need to know, are you on my side?”

Peggy frowns. “Of course, Howard. You know that I am.”

"It’s hard to tell anymore," he says quietly, and the sharp exhale of his breath is the closest he ever gets to actually sighing. "If anything happens to me, though, I’ve got it all written out and sealed into a manila envelope addressed to you. Obadiah is the only one who knows about it; he’s got it in his personal safe at home for me."

She reaches over, briefly, to squeeze his hand when nobody around them is looking. “I’ll do whatever I can.”

"It was good seeing you again. Tell Gabe I said hi, will you?" Howard asks. "I should get going; Maria’s waiting in the car. We’re going to the beach house for a while. You understand."

She nods. “Give her my best.”

Three days later, the front-page headline of the  _Daily Bugle_ trumpets that both Howard and Maria Stark are dead—killed in a car crash in the Hamptons.

Stane gets very quiet when Peggy calls two weeks later to ask about the envelope, so quiet she thinks the line had gone dead, and she’s just gotten out her first “Hello?” when he speaks again.

"Mrs. Jones, I. Well, I uh." He clears his throat, sounding regretful. "We’re not publicizing this for obvious reasons, but. Mr. Stark—I don’t know if you’ve seen him recently. But he was. Well, he’d been hitting the sauce pretty hard the last few years and frankly, he’d gotten a little paranoid—"

"I think I understand, Mr. Stane. Thank you for your time," Peggy tells him, and she doesn’t so much hang up as let the handset fall back onto the receiver. It lands askew, but Peggy hardly notices.

She never touches gin again for as long as she lives, although she used to enjoy it. The smell of it reminds her too much of twisted metal and broken glass and blood mingling with rainwater on pavement.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is borrowed from this translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead: http://www.jbeilharz.de/ellis/egypt.html


End file.
